The invention relates generally to fuel dispensers and, more particularly, to fuel dispensers and dispensing systems providing interactive, multimedia functions to a customer. In recent years, fuel dispensers have become more than a means for fueling a vehicle. Service station owners are advertising at the dispenser with everything from simple signs to video displays running commercials. Some service stations have integrated fast-food or quick-serve restaurants, and the dispensers have been converted into complex point-of-sale (POS) systems for ordering food from these restaurants. Additionally, the POS systems facilitate ordering other services, such as car washes, at the gas station. Most modern fuel dispensers include card readers or other payment means allowing payment for not only fuel, but also any products or services ordered at the dispenser.
As the amount of information and number of products and services provided to the consumer increases, dispenser suppliers need economical ways to provide information to the customer and market the fuel company""s primary products and services. As the amount of information and number of products and services increase, the number of ways to present such information to the customer increases exponentially. Each oil company and station operator wants to provide information and merchandise to their customers in different ways. Until applicants"" invention, these companies and station operators were significantly limited in providing information and marketing goods and services at the dispenser.
A typical fuel dispensing system includes a plurality of fuel dispensers with two fueling positions per dispenser and a central site controller. Sophisticated dispenser systems incorporate expensive, hardware-intensive controllers in each dispenser. Many fueling positions may include a display and touch pad (or screen) to order goods or services. Until now, customer interactivity was limited to choosing an option presented by the dispenser. Unfortunately, changing the various options or presentations for the customer involved changing firmware or downloading new software to each dispenser. With any software application, revisions are necessary and when revisions are made, every dispenser at every desired location must be upgraded.
Although the information age is upon us, modern fuel dispensers have been unable to take full advantage of the tremendous merchandising opportunity presented when a customer is fueling a vehicle. Likewise, customers cannot access useful information during this period. Modern dispensers are unable to provide national advertising and merchandising campaigns or offer information a traveler may want or need during fueling. For example, customers cannot purchase products or services outside the realm of the local station store, such as concert or movie tickets. Valuable information, such as news, weather, traffic updates or customized road maps, is unavailable. Although modern dispensers are highly sophisticated, the cost of providing customized local and remote merchandising, as well as information dissemination, has not been economical.
Prior dispenser technology provided little, if any, integration between advertising and merchandising at the POS. Even in today""s most sophisticated systems, advertising is sent to the fuel dispenser from a separate source and often displayed on a separate display than the POS. See Gilbarco""s U.S. Pat. No. 5,602,745 for Fuel Dispenser Electronics Design, U.S. Pat. No. 5,543,849 for Synchronization of Prerecorded Audio/Video Signals with Multimedia Controllers, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/659,304, filed Jun. 6, 1996. Each reference is incorporated herein by reference. The POS simply functions to display order options to the customer, and the customer responds accordingly. The current trend is to increase the computational ability within each dispenser when additional functionality is needed. Although current dispensers are highly sophisticated, the cost to provide each fueling position on each fuel dispenser with the computational horsepower to fully realize multimedia applications outweighed the benefits, and providing customized software for the thousands of stations throughout the world would be very expensive.
Thus, there is a need to provide an economically viable dispenser architecture capable of providing multimedia functions, such as order entry, advertising, merchandising and information dissemination. There is a need for a user-friendly graphical user interface through which a customer can interact to access these functions or services. Furthermore, there is a need, not only for local merchandising and information dissemination, but for remote merchandising and information dissemination from sources that are not directly related to the main service station store to take full advantage of the merchandising potential at the dispenser. There is also a need for an interactive fuel dispenser capable of providing a customer the opportunity to order foods, products and services from the local station store in addition to purchasing products or services, such as movie tickets, or downloading information such as news, weather, traffic updates or road maps from local or remote sites.
Applicants"" fulfill this need by providing an interactive fuel dispenser system having a plurality of fuel dispensers operating in conjunction with a local server. Each dispenser generally has two fueling positions, each with a graphical user interface through which a customer interacts. In contrast with the recent trend in turning fuel dispensers into super computers, applicants provide a dispenser architecture that need only be sufficient to establish interactivity with a server to create multimedia applications and carry out POS functions with a browser interface. Each fueling position acts as a client of a local server at the fuel station store. In the preferred embodiment, each fueling position client also may access remote servers connected to the same network in which the fueling position clients and the local server are connected. Preferably, this network is connected to the Worldwide Web of the Internet.
Each client (fueling position) may include a graphical interface and browser to perform interactive functions at the dispenser. The hardware at the dispenser and fueling position is preferably minimal and only sophisticated enough to establish interactivity with the fueling customer in order to minimize cost. Computer intensive services and functions may be provided at the local server or one of the remote servers. Typically, the browser at each fueling position simply requests services from one of the servers on the network to provide any type of function or service desired at the fueling position. Most notably, applicants"" invention is not limited to simple xe2x80x9cmass mediaxe2x80x9d marketing with no interaction taking place between the customer and the advertising. The invention actively encourages merchandising at the fueling position. Interactive video/graphic advertising messages provide customers the ability to immediately react to the advertising or merchandising and purchase the products or services advertised, whether local or remote. The dispensers may include card readers at each fueling position to receive payment for the goods or services at the same time payment is made for the fuel.
The invention provides a system for providing interactive video/graphic presentations to a customer and offering the customer selections for services and merchandise as desired. By minimizing the hardware and software commitment at each dispenser and providing services from local and remote servers, an interactive, multimedia system, which is easily updated and economically feasible, is made possible. Providing such remote services is virtually impossible to reproduce within the confines of a service station environment without applicants"" invention.
In particular, the invention expands local advertising and its minimalist form of merchandising into an opportunity for sophisticated local and off-site advertising and merchandising ranging from ordering fast food and car washes to purchasing movie tickets or any other product or service desired. Remote products or services may be sent directly to the customers home. Another unique option provided by applicants"" invention is an audio or audio/video intercom between the fueling position and one of the local or remote servers. The intercom provides an audible (and visual) interface between a station operator or other individual. The intercom is especially useful with order entry.
The invention is preferably implemented in a dispenser having a processor, operating system and graphical user interface running a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) compliant browser. Each fueling station at each dispenser allows a customer to browse the Worldwide Web of the Internet to the extent desired by the station operator. In short, the fueling position acts as a hypertext markup language (HTML) compliant client with a graphical user interface and browser.
HTTP is a known application protocol that provides users access to files using the standard page description language known as HTML. The HTTP provides tremendous flexibility in accessing files in and including different formats, such as text, graphics, images, sound and video. HTML provides basic document formatting and allows a developer to specify xe2x80x9clinksxe2x80x9d to and between any combination of local and remote servers as well as files therein. Use of a HTML compliant client browser involves specification of a link via a uniform resource locator (URL). Once a link is specified, the client makes a request to the identified server and receives a document formatted according to HTML. These documents are often referred to as xe2x80x9cweb pagesxe2x80x9d. For more details on HTML and its specific implementation, the HTML Reference Manual, published by Sandia National Laboratories and available on the Internet at http.//www.sandia.gov/sci_compute/html.ref.html, is incorporated herein by reference.